Articles : JavaBoutique's Introduction to Java : Q and A :
Comparing Different Web Application Development Technologies :

Follow-up #2

Q

In your article "Comparing Different Web Application Development Technologies", you state:

"In another year and a half or so when Microsoft wipes out Netscape's poorer implementation of the DOM, and a larger percentage of web surfers have moved to compatible browsers, I would consider dropping Java on the client side completely."

I'm interested in understanding this pretty broad statement. Is this really meant to be taken at face value?

A

Well, the first thing I should make clear is that the text from which you pulled the quote is not an article. It is from the QandA section where I am really talking off the cuff to people like you who write in about my articles. So sometimes, I feel safer throwing in opinion in this section.

Yes, it is quite a broad statement, and yes I have been wrong many times in predicting anything beyond 3 or 4 weeks :)

However, I truly do believe that the Microsoft's implementation of the DOM is superior to that of Netscape's. And that in the long run, I believe that the Microsoft DOM will win out. When that happens, (as it did for Netscape's implementation of Frames several years ago), we web designers can have a safer, more cross-browser code base to work from.

And that will be good news.

I suspect that for a good portion of web applications, dHTML will be a more lightweight, easy-to-use solution than Java.

So I look forward to a standardization in the market.

Selena Sol contributes to the JavaBoutique's Introduction to Java. Selena curently works for Barclays Capital in London, one of the leading global investment banks in Europe and has worked as a software developer for the National Center for Human Genome research, Microline Software, Neuron Data, and Electric Eye in Singapore. Selena is perhaps best-known for creating the Public Domain Web Script Archive (Extropia) and writing several books on Web Programming (Perl, CGI, Java).
Email: selena@extropia.com

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